Picasso ripped by falling visitor

January 25th. 2010 – A woman who was taking an art class at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, last Friday, has accidentally fallen into a Picasso painting and damaged it.

The painting called ‘The Actor’ sustained a vertical tear of about six inches (15cm) in the lower right-hand corner, but the damage did not affect the “focal point of the composition”. The work from the Rose period was painted in the winter of 1904-1905. The repair of the canvas, which measures 6ft. by 4ft. (1.8m by 1.2m) is to be completed in time for the ‘Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’ exhibition, which will feature some 250 works from the museum’s collection and is due to open at the end of April 2010